ACT Labor’s Andrew Barr at the wheel of a Peugeot, with ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury peering through the windscreen, but what do they really drive? Photo: Region.
So your mailbox is filling up with candidate pamphlets sooner than you can bin them all. And your news feed is full of many big dollar signs about what each party will do if they get a foot in the ACT Government door come election day on 19 October.
Chances are, you’ve tuned it all out. It’s white noise by this point.
Allow us to help with an easy metric.
It’s said you can tell a lot about a person by the dog they own. So it figures the car they choose to drive would be similarly revealing. Take the Nissan Micra, for example. Or the Dodge RAM or the Mazda 3. You already know exactly who’s in the driver’s seat.
So, what are you voting for this election? The Hyundai IONIQ 6, or the Hyundai IONIQ 5. Yeah, this is tough, actually.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr admiring Livi Krevatin’s Summernats-Grand-Champion-winning Porsche 911. Photo: James Coleman.
ACT Labor
Andrew Barr, current Chief Minister and ACT Labor leader gets around in a fully electric Hyundai IONIQ 6.
In the base rear-wheel-drive ‘Dynamiq’ form, this starts from $74,000. It’s a slightly polarising car on account of its fish-like styling, but the upside is it boasts the lowest drag coefficient of any car Hyundai has ever made (meaning, it’s very slippery through the air).
Mr Barr loves it for that – “aerodynamic design that delivers energy efficiency and 620 km range”, he says.
“Also, super fast DC charging.”
The Hyundai IONIQ 6 in almost exactly the same spec as Mr Barr’s, outside the Shine Dome. Photo: James Coleman.
When connected to a fast DC charger, the IONIQ’s battery can get from 10 to 80 per cent full in a claimed 18 minutes.
However, the big battery underneath does come with a drawback for Mr Barr – the lack of a spare tyre.
He doesn’t name a particular dream car but admits that the go-fast N version of the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and the Volvo EX30 “look fun”. These come with 0-100 km/h acceleration times of 3.4 seconds and 3.6 seconds, respectively.
ACT Greens
Shane Rattenbury was among the first to get into one of the cheapest new EVs on the market, the MG ZS SUV. The range opens at $39,990 for the base Excite model, although it did dip to $34,990 for a short stint in August.
“What I like most about it is that it’s fully electric, so it has zero tailpipe emissions and is powered by the ACT’s 100 per cent renewable electricity supply,” he says.
“It’s also a good car for trips away, with plenty of room and good clearance for dirt roads.”
It’s a thing – every electric car will have blue on it somewhere. Photo: MG Cars UK.
The Excite model has an estimated range of 320 km, but in 2020, when it first launched, this was closer to 260 km.
“But with public chargers available in many places, I’ve never been caught short even on longer trips to Sydney or the south coast, and the new models are getting better all the time,” Mr Rattenbury adds.
He remains “pretty happy” with it, but in an ideal world, he’d have a solar-powered car like the one the ANU enters into the World Solar Challenge each year, tasked with travelling 3000 km through the outback fuelled by nothing but the sun.
“I suspect that just as technology from race cars eventually translates into production models, we will see some of the technology from the Solar Challenge being applied to regular EVs in the future.”
Shane Rattenbury’s dream car is powered by solar panels and an electric motor. Photo: ANU.
Canberra Liberals
Elizabeth Lee dreamed of owning the two-door Toyota Celica as a teenager, but now the mother-of-two and party leader loves the “smooth, easy drive” of her Hyundai IONIQ 5.
“Having to plan charging”, less so.
Before you think this must be closely related to Barr’s IONIQ 6, it looks nothing like it. More modern-day DeLorean and less … well, fish-like.
The Hyundai IONIQ 5, posing in Forrest. Photo: James Coleman.
Independents for Canberra
Lead candidate for Ginninderra Mark Richardson drives a 2021 Subaru Forester Sport, bought when his previous car was destroyed by hail.
He wanted something with all-wheel drive “due to my experiences on Canberra’s roads”.
“A combination of slippery when wet, plus the ever-increasing number of potholes that seem to spring up.”
Mr Richardson was looking at a Toyota RAV4, but at the time, these came with a two-year wait. And the Subaru WRX wagon fell off the list due to the cost of insurance (but he doesn’t rule it out as a “mid-life crisis later on”).
In Sport form, the trusty Forester comes with a 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine and CVT gearbox underneath and a lot of bright orange trim pieces on the outside.
“I love the fact it can carry so much stuff,” he says.
“It has come in extremely handy whilst campaigning. It will need a detail after the election. It has been used like a ute for the last few months. Always with the mandatory corflute maintenance toolkit somewhere in the back.”
Subaru Forester Sport, complete with go-fast red bits. Photo: Subaru Australia.
He does admit it tends to like the drink, with Subaru conservatively claiming fuel consumption of 7.4 litres per 100 km.
His dream car? That’s easy.
“My dream car was always a Lamborghini. I’ve wanted one since I was a child. Unfortunately, nowadays, I need assistance getting in and out of one. Maybe the SUV version would work better now. I could live with that.”
